Games: The 3DS Price Drop and You

We spent a little bit of time discussing Nintendo’s sudden decision to lower the price of its newest hand-held system, the Nintendo 3DS, on our first podcast, but I wanted to open up a discussion on that topic to the public.

For those of you not in the loop: Nintendo launched the 3DS just a few months ago with a suggested retail price of $249.99. On August 12th, they lowered the MSRP to $169.99 for reasons that were not officially disclosed, though many have accredited the price drop to lower-than-predicted sales. For those that purchased the 3DS before August 12th, Nintendo enrolled them into an “Ambassador Program” where they are entitled to 20 free games (10 original Nintendo games and 10 Gameboy Advance games) that will begin to be available on September 1st.

As a 3DS ambassador, I for one am thrilled with the price drop. One of the neat features of the hand-held system is called Streetpass. With Streetpass, your 3DS has the capability of “meeting” other 3DS systems in public settings. Unfortunately, due to the lack of people who actually own the system, I have very limited experience with this feature. I took my 3DS with me to San Francisco a couple of weeks ago hoping I would “meet” a few people while I was out and about. Needless to say, I did not.

With the massive decrease in price, I am looking forward to seeing how sales of the system are affected. What do you think? Do you own a 3DS? How do you feel about the Ambassador Program?

I don’t know, handheld gaming systems still offer a few unique features. For me, the biggest drawback to using an iphone or an ipod touch as a gaming system is the lack of physical controls. The touch screen works very well for certain types of games, but that kind of control is definitely not ideal for the kinds of games the 3DS and the Vita are marketing.